#177: The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man (1980)
Directed by David Lynch
Screenplay by Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren & David Lynch
Based on the books by Sir Frederick Treves & Ashley Montagu
Starring Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft and John Gielgud


If you have never felt like an outcast, you've either lived a life of privilege beyond anyone's expectations or you were too stupid to realize that things weren't always hunky-dory. In Lynch's The Elephant Man it takes the idea to the extreme physical nature of being an outcast, which makes it easier for the viewer to understand why Merrick was treated as a circus sideshow. It doesn't make it right, but because he looked so different...deformed even, his status as an outsider was sadly more believable.

In early grade school, I lived in Saint John and then Fredericton. After the fifth grade I moved to the town where I was raised through kindergarten, Woodstock (all in New Brunswick by the way). I had a lot of friends in those early days, was affable and kind and generally popular. In fact the only time there was any real rift at all was in the fourth grade when I had taken a baseball bat to school one day and accidentally hit a classmate upside the head. Needless to say, I was banned from bringing the bat back.

Returning to a place of familiarity didn't seem like a daunting task, but it was soon apparent that it wasn't a cake walk either. Shyness was never a weakness of mine, but in the sixth grade it slowly crept into my worldview. The kids were not as accepting or welcoming as I was hoping. By this time, they had their cliques and friends all locked down and had no room for a guy like me. I guess I was a sensitive child as I did end up crying once or twice due to peer criticism. It was a shock to me, how was I any different? Why was I being treated like an alien?

This isn't to say the entire school shunned me, no, I made some friends but nothing substantial. Joey was the best friend I made at the time and he was treated worse than I was. He wore jogging pants and was subjected to name-calling and taunting from classmates. If I remember correctly, the insult of choice was "grub" to indicate a child of poverty.

After the sixth grade and a few weeks before summer vacation ended I received a phone call from someone at the Woodstock Middle School where I was enrolling that fall. I had signed on for the french immersion program and it was apparently full. I had been in french immersion before and they offered to skip me a grade.

This didn't help my popularity with the classmates from a year earlier. And I wasn't exactly propelled into stardom in the eighth grade either. It was an adjustment but not entirely a bad one. Luckily I met Arlo at this time. A story we've told many times when people ask is summed up like this: I brought supplies for a project and he didn't. He mooched off me and a friendship was born. I consider him my closest friend more than a decade later.

High School was better but there was still a sense of criticism from people that didn't make any sense. Obviously every student goes through that and some say the ones dishing out the pain are the least secure with themselves of all students. The point is, this rejection from my peers helped me in the long run and it wasn't apparent until the last couple of years. I'm comfortable in my own skin and can make it on my own without the constant company of others. I still seek approval but am not devastated when I don't get it.

Merrick was hideously disfigured but was a human being underneath it all. It's a shame he was treated as such. Even the charity given on to him made him feel marginalized. He didn't want special treatment, he just wanted to be treated like a person of equal value. It is well done and is likely Lynch's most straightforward film (other than The Straight Story) and it has obvious parallel's with adolescence and the pains of growing up under the microscope of your peers.

In any case, I survived and am a better person for it. We're all outcasts, let's not make others feel that way.

Pseudo-resolution: read at least 30 books in 2009.

I consider myself to be a voracious reader. I don't remember the full tally from 2007 but it was around the 25 mark. Not shabby, I thought.

Coming to the end of the year, I expect I could burn through a couple more books and I wanted to see how I did in expanding my mind through reading this year.

To my dismay, I realized I haven't read even 15 books as of today for the entire year. I have been slacking, some would say. It would be easy to blame my old job or my classes but that's hardly fair. There have been many hours of sloth-like behaviour and poker-playing online that could have been used in much better fashion.

Here's the list of what I've read:

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
It by Stephen King
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Watchmen by Alan Moore


Not a bad list. I could tentatively include The Stand by Stephen King as well as I read the second half of it this past summer. I had started it about five years ago, put it down and plum forgot about it until this summer.

Within the next day or so, The Poisonwood Bible will be complete and I'll likely move on to another to devour in the coming weeks, not sure yet what it will be.

Due to my lack of reading accomplishment -- 13 is paltry -- I am making my sole New Year's resolution. I will read at least 30 books next year. Luckily, quitting smoking does not have to be a resolution as I am two weeks into that project and have suffered no setbacks as of yet.

I am looking for suggestions of what to read in 2009. Believe me, I'll read pretty much anything. It doesn't have to be fiction, it can be politics, travel, sociology, etc. Here are a few titles I plan on reading (all for the first time...some should have been read years ago):

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Cocksure by Mordecai Richler
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

So if you have any other suggestions, please comment here or let me know in any way you can figure out.

Also, if you're looking for books to read, check out the following lists:

50 Greatest Travel Books
Books that induce a mindfuck
Time Magazine's top 100 novels

Cheers,

JCW

#178: Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Directed by Henry Selick
Written by Tim Burton, Michael McDowell and Caroline Thompson
Starring Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara and a slew of other voice actors.


Merry Christmas everyone! Okay, so I'm a week early but I'm sure everyone has been cramming full of Christmas movies, music and fruit-themed cookies/cake that you likely want to murder your entire family. It's a pleasant time of year.

Brace yourself for this one folks, I have never seen A Christmas Story and I have been informed of exactly how deprived that makes me. It's the go-to Christmas movie for my cousins. Their family watches it every year or did when they all lived in the same place. My family has its own rituals of staying out of each other's way while secretly wondering why everyone is so pissed off.

I get the gist of it, honestly I do. But it's now at a point where I've heard people building this movie up year after year that it would not live up to the expectations, it's impossible. Most of these people saw it when they were kids too, so they have the whole nostalgia factor working for them. I'd be seeing it for the first time through adult eyes. If I had kids of my own (crosses heart) I may have some benefit from it. As it is, I'd be a cynical twenty-something wondering why it isn't better than it is and I'd be chastised forever for not thinking it's the best Christmas movie out there. So instead of risking the backlash, I'll forever avoid watching it just in case.

That's probably really stupid, but for the most part I am not interested in Christmas any more. Santa Claus doesn't capture me in his mystique any more. In fact if I did awake to some bastard breaking into my house in the middle of the night any time of the year, bad things would happen. And since I went to a liberal arts university, I have developed an anti-materialism sentiment over the past few years. Luckily I haven't been completely poisoned by my peers as I haven't accepted Plato, Aristotle or Dante as my personal lord and saviour. Jesus Christ neither.

Here's the deal. I'm not religious, I don't have money and I don't need to stockpile a bunch of crap I don't need. The only thing that would be really beneficial to me as a gift would be a new camera. As an aspiring writer-at-large, taking your own pictures can really save time and effort. Alas, I know that isn't happening. The next best thing would be an ass load of books. I don't even really care who writes them, I'll read it. But other than that, what the hell do I need people spending money they don't have on things I don't need or even want? If it's the thought that counts then the gifts aren't necessary.

So that's where movies like Nightmare Before Christmas* and Bad Santa come in. They don't force the message of Christmas down your throat. It's there, sure but it has to be or someone will get pissed that the number one shopping (and shopper's death) season was sullied by cynicism. The only sappy Christmas movie that I can stomach** is Christmas Vacation, but the Griswold's are anything but wholesome.

Despite being a sarcastic ass hole in many respects towards people and things I deem as ridiculous, one of the best things about Nightmare Before Christmas is the soundtrack. In high school I was in musicals...yes...musicals, three of them to be exact. I couldn't skate - well I could, but I couldn't stop - and I was short so the sports scene wasn't very welcoming.

In my senior year I finally got a semi-prominent role. We did Jesus Christ Superstar and I starred as Pontius Pilate. On the Friday night show - the third of four - I took the stage with bravado for my first song singing about a dream. So Pilate had a vision in his sleep that Jesus would come and he (Pilate) would end up being responsible for his death.

Midway through the song I've already performed twice - not counting rehearsals over the previous two months - I freeze. My whole family chose to come on Friday for some damn reason and they see their stocky Pilate crash into the side of the stage more or less. The video, which has long since been lost, went in for the close up at the moment of truth. My eyes glazed over as I was obviously trying to find my spot. With the camera still on close-up (bastard cameraman should have gone wide!) I looked down into the front row where the director of the play was watching in horror. I smiled at her and shrugged.

This whole debacle lasted maybe thirty seconds but it felt like an eternity. I found my place, finished the song and stomped backstage cursing up a storm. Thankfully I had the presence of mind to turn the microphone off.

I channeled the rage for the rest of the shows you might say. Two of my closest friends, Arlo and DP played Jesus on alternating nights. I was the only Pilate. For four nights straight I had my best friends/Jesus whipped and crucified. Old ladies looked at me like I was the devil as they left the theater.

After you've killed Jesus four times in a week, Christmas just isn't as special...



* Tim Burton did not direct this movie...please stop saying he did
**The Muppet Christmas Carol is also acceptable

#179: A History of Violence

A History of Violence (2005)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Screenplay by Josh Olson
Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner & Vince Locke
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt.

Two Cronenberg flicks in relatively quick succession, score!

A History of Violence is still probably his most mainstream effort to date even though it has many of the same quirks and deadpan performances seen in most of Cronenberg's catalogue. The kids' performances were jarring but they weren't so bad to deter my overall enjoyment of the film.

It was one of those theatrical releases that you wouldn't have expected when living in Fredericton. The theatre in Fredericton in notorious for not playing independent films of any kind. Even beyond indies, the Coen Brothers were greatly ignored until Intolerable Cruelty (wha?). Fredericton's Empire Theatres didn't get The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou? or The Man Who Wasn't There. So you can understand why I was shocked when this one came to town.

So Arlo Newton and I hit up the movies before it drifts off for the six months or so before a DVD release. I'm fine with watching a movie on DVD, but if I have the chance to see it on the big screen I will. Sure, Arlo was keen on it too but if he wasn't that wouldn't have stopped me.

Go to a movie theatre sometime and think about how many people are there all alone. There aren't many are there? I've never understood this. Back in 1997 I went to a birthday party for a friend of mine that ended up going to the movies. Kyle and his other buddies wanted to go see In and Out, otherwise known as Kevin Kline slumming it for a paycheck.

I bailed at the theatre for The Game, David Fincher's pre-Fight Club mindfuck. It was the first time I ever went to the cinema by myself and it wasn't as sad or lonely as I was expecting.

Over the years I've been looked at sideways by many people, mostly women, who find it odd that I go to the movies all by my lonesome. My reasoning is that it isn't exactly a social experience until afterwards. It doesn't work well as a date because there's no interaction except for "putting the moves" on her with the old yawn and swipe. The only differences between watching a movie at home alone and in the theatre alone are the big screen and the fact that other people can see you.

Choosing people to go to the movies with is a tricky process if you actually care about the movie you're going to see. Ask the following questions:

1) Will this person talk or constantly ask questions?
2) Will this person sit still or will he/she disrupt the theatre with antics?
3) Is this person prone to inoportune fits of laughter?
4) Does the type of movie you're planning on seeing fit into his/her realm of understanding or interest?

Believe me, these are important questions. In the end, it's the safest bet to go alone if you really want to absorb the film.

With Arlo, I knew this wasn't a problem. The guy has been my closest friend since the eighth grade and so we know each other better than most people. A couple other people may have gone with us, but Arlo and I really connected with this film.

On the walk out of the theatre we started discussing the idea of violence and whether violent tendencies can be inherited genetically or if we're more a product of the environment surrounding us. Nature versus nurture type of discussion. Also, as is plain from the trailer, Tom (Viggo) has tried to escape his past. We talked about how this could be representative of him trying to break away from what he naturally is, trying to force him to be someone else, someone better.

This brings me to the most important question when finding someone to join you on your theatrical experience: will he/she be willing to actually discuss the film or will he/she focus on only the superficialities instead of diving deeper into the subject matter?

This isn't exactly a deal-breaker and it shouldn't be. But if you find someone willing to go further with the film, it makes the experience that much better. Watching a film is so much more than mindless entertainment, or at least it can be. It's the aftermath that makes watching a movie with others worth it, it's a sense of community.

Of course if you're going to see a Michael Bay movie, all bets are off. Go with the circus, it's going to be two hours of ADHD explosions anyway and there won't be much to talk about afterward. Basically, Bay is the fast food equivalent of filmmakers. While it may be somewhat gratifying at first, by the end you realize you've made a huge mistake.

Conversely, filmmakers like Cronenberg might not be fine dining, but it certainly is an acquired taste. In any case you're likely going to get more out of it than your dirt-variety fast food assembly line. But if you're diet consists completely of McDonald's, that might be all you want and anything else is strange and terrifying. For many reasons this is depressing.

If only Horatio had been part of our lives at that point. He has a man-crush on Viggo Mortensen that dwarfs any man-crush that any heterosexual man I've ever met has ever had.

Mets = choke artists according to Hamels

As the New York Daily News had shown in 2007 on the front page of their paper, the New York Mets had indeed thrown away a division lead only to miss the playoffs. History repeated itself in 2008 as once again they squandered a late season division lead. Now the lead wasn't as big as the one they let slide the year before, but still.

This week, a story that has been getting a ton of press is Cole Hamels, aka best pitcher of the Philadelphia Phillies, saying the Mets are choke artists. If this causes an uproar it's one of those head-scratchers. Mets fans know better than anyone, even Hamels, that their team is almost on par with the Cubs in terms of pathetic losers...okay, no one is even close to the Cubs losing ways.

So when the Mets saw seven...count em, seven late inning leads for pitcher Johan Santana be squandered by their bullpen this past season, they needed to adress the issue. Without so many words, GM Omar Minaya admitted they were choke artists by signing one top closer and trading for another.

Great news! Oh shit, what do you mean we only have three starting pitchers with major league experience? Uh-oh. If Johan could start all 162 games I'm sure the Mets would do fine, but sadly it's not the case. Sure Mike Pelfry started to show his potential in 2008 and John Maine can certainly toss a solid six or seven innings from time to time, but they are in trouble if they think that's enough.

Minaya has decided against pursuing any of the remaining top free agent pitchers like A.J. Burnett, Derek Lowe or Ben Sheets in lieu of either finding cheaper options or building from within the organization. One NY Post columnist thinks Lowe is still an option though, attributing it to rope-a-dope strategy. I'm not sure if this has anything to back it up or if it's just speculation.

Not to bring up ancient history, but trading Scott Kazmir all those years ago must really sting now.

The Putz trade doesn't make sense, at least not the timing of it. Sure I'm no MLB GM but there are warning signs abound in this. Putz missed a ton of time this season, and my fantasy team suffered because of it. Incidentally my other closer was Francisco Rodriguez...but I digress.

So trading for Putz raises the question of whether or not he's healthy or if he'll even be half the pitcher he was in 2007. As a mid-season acquisition it would have worked. Minaya could have monitored his progress and see if he was worth acquiring at all. Of course it appears that Putz was on the move regardless as the Detroit Tigers were pushing hard to land him. It didn't work and the Mets appear to have been forced to jump the gun.

Spending big money on relievers is a crapshoot. The Mets have had bad luck and poor performance in the bullpen for a couple years and now they overcompensate for it without addressing a glut of other problems. Other than Jose Reyes, David Wright and maybe Carlos Beltran, the team doesn't have a reliable offense. Sure, Carlos Delgado had a nice comeback year and Ryan Church when he wasn't suffering from concussions did a fine job too. Even if you count those two, the Mets still don't have a full lineup and the rotation is worse.

So Cole Hamels has every right to call the Mets out, because he's being truthful if a little malicious at the same time. It adds a little fuel to the fire and it gives Mets fans another reason to hate Philly (as if stealing two consecutive division titles wasn't enough).

If the Mets land Lowe like Joel Sherman of the Post pontificates about, then maybe my tune will change. Until then they're still the second unluckiest team in baseball.

The fine art of quitting smoking

The city of Halifax is cold, rainy and some would argue pretentious in attitude. I love it there.

School had finished for the semester and being unemployed at the moment it seemed only logical to hit the road and b-line it for the port city. Ruddiger and I sat up the night before waxing philosophic about friendships and so we woke up a couple hours later than expected. We didn't make it to Halifax until after 6:00. Considering that we were only staying until Sunday morning means we have little time.

We hit up the Agricola LC where I reunited with my old friend Baron Philippe in Pinot Noir glory. After a flurry of Rock Band excitement at Chris and Bree's while downing the whole bottle of wine in a matter of an hour or so, we put on our suits and were set to hit the town.

I called a mutual friend, Travis. When he picked up I asked for him and he acknowledged that he was indeed the Travis I was looking for you.

"I'm going to punch you right in the face," I said.

"Uh..." he didn't know what to say and then I started laughing and told him who I was. I told him Ruddiger and I were in town and asked if he wanted to meet up. He asked where we were going and I told him the Pogue Fado.

"Uh, that place? No thanks. Gross."

I had never been there but figured he had good reason or had been denied by whatever lady conquest he was on at the time.

The Pogue Fado is advertised as an Irish Pub but it's a pretty poor excuse for one. The food was fine. The chicken wings were some of the best I'd had in a long time and the Guinness flowed for me. Decked in our suits, there were five of us at this time, we were having a good time. The worm turned then and there.

As I bit into a wing the music morphed into the heavy repetitive beat associated with seedy dance clubs the world over. A supposed Irish pub piping dance music in as loud as can be. Lame.

It was maddening. But we stuck it out, the food and beer was worth it to a degree, clearly we wouldn't stay the rest of the night but we figured we'd give it another hour or so.

Bree hates cigarettes, I mean she loathes them. For the last few years I have been a casual smoker who sometimes goes on a week or two long binge. Basically there were days I didn't smoke and there were days I smoked at least once an hour while I was awake.

By Friday I was in the midst of one of these extended binges where I smoked regularly. I hadn't bought a pack in quite a while but I had mastered the art of bumming. Either that or my friends are just very generous people.

After a few beers and that bottle of wine from a couple hours earlier I was feeling boisterous.

"I bet you I can quit smoking right now. I'll go the next six months without a smoke, guaranteed."

Bree was hesitant. She looked around and asked Ruddiger and company if I smoked a lot. He said I did and he wished he had taken that action.

"How much?" one of them asked...remember the Guinness and the wine.

"$100 each on the condition that I get to have one more before I drop them."

They agreed but no one we were with smoked or had smokes on them. Ruddiger did occasionally much like me. He saved it mostly for when he was driving.

I jumped from my seat and left the bar for the cold and bitter street. The first person I saw smoking was a husky guy right out the front door to the right. He was huddled against the wall and I figured I'd give it a go.

"Excuse me, could I grab a smoke off ya?"

He looked at me and smiled. "For sure you can, sure." He dragged it out in what I thought was a Scottish accent. He gave me a cigarette.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Glasgow man. Working the docks here."

"How do you like Halifax?"

"Oh man it's a right good town, reminds me a lot of Glasgow."

Of course this is the best I can do to decipher what his exact words were as I was inebriated and he was Scottish. Good chap, name of John. We shot the shit for a while, I told him about being an out of work writer and he humoured me, which I appreciated. We went our separate ways and my last cigarette has a story behind it. A brief one, but a story nevertheless.

While I was outside, Ruddiger had gone to the bathroom. On his way back to the table he tells me a group of guys in one of the booths he passed had called him a fag. If you know Ruddiger, you know that a few years ago he would likely have stopped in his tracks turned with a sly smile and shot some choice words back at these douches. Instead he returned to the table without causing a scene, he was the better man, matured...it's somehow depressing but he did the right thing.

The dance music turned into a cover band playing radio hits from the 90's. We left and I haven't touched a cigarette yet. Sure it's early, but it's a step in the right direction.

#180: Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Written and Directed by George Romero
Starring a bunch of people you've never heard of


I'm not what you'd call a horror fan. Don't get me wrong, every genre has something worth offering but there is so much crap to sift through in the world of horror it's almost not worth trying. Luckily for me, my friend Isaac went through all that trouble so I didn't have to.

Video Stop, the same place my folks rented $1.00 seven-day rentals, is where he lurked. See, along with a ton of classics, Video Stop also seemed to stock-pile every awful horror movie known to man. And he kept going back for more.

Because of our friendship, I developed a knowledge of horror somewhat against my will but in the end it was worth it. If a horror movie was good he'd watch it again, if it wasn't he would just warn me against the real terror behind it...that it was a complete waste of time. Time we wouldn't get back. The horror...

He's a horror nut. For a while he had every intention on becoming the next Romero or Sam Raimi. At the time I had my sights set on the marquee. And seeing how he could have become the next master of horror I figured I'd be his Bruce Campbell.

He made a couple horror movies in high school, and considering his budget of zero and household appliances they weren't too bad. The one he made for his Media Studies class in his senior year, Revenant was pretty damn good. It was about a group of convicts trying to break out of prison. For one reason or another one of them had this spell that brought the dead back to life and obviously the dead wreaked havoc on the inmates.

I was one of them. My death scene was excellent. I was in a bathroom during the breakout and Isaac tried to jimmy-rig a rope system to jerk me around the room. An invisible entity was supposed to be thrashing me around.

After a couple run-throughs it just wasn't working.

"How about I just do it myself?"

"Uh...okay."

The end result had me screaming as the toilets flushed and the taps turned on by themselves and then my body flailed around the bathroom until I smeared my blood on the wall*. I cracked my head off the toilet in one of the stalls and I biffed my shoulders off the wall a couple times. It's amazing no bones were broken.

The film was finished, and I had lived my own Bruce Campbell moment for Isaac. Bruce has been beaten up and has the scars to prove it working on the Evil Dead series and I did the same on a scaled down level for Revenant.

Isaac shifted gears though after that. He graduated high school that Spring and moved to Halifax. He ended up focusing more on music and a couple years after high school he was the lead singer in the band The Search for Alexander and later played with groups The Magnetic Lines and Tattered Black Dress.

After a disillusioning experience at Dalhousie University and their theatre program I was done with acting, at least as a profession. Writing was eventually my decision. But those days of horror films have not gone unforgotten.

A couple years ago, Isaac and his friend Terry wrote Play of the Living Dead. It was an homage to Night of the Living Dead and zombie movies everywhere. Isaac showed me the movie in high school and I knew he loved it dearly. He did it justice in his own take on the zombie mythos. It won Fringe hit at the Fringe Festival in Halifax and broke attendance records at the Neptune Theatre.

Even now, Isaac and I are working on a novel together that brings together his horror sensibilities and my own active imagination. And instead of trying to be the equivalent of someone else creatively we're finding our own voices in the collective experiment. Yes we're influenced by Stephen King, George Romero and Sam Raimi, but we're trying to bring something fresh to the table. Whenever that happens, the horror fans know it and appreciate it more than the average fan. Horror lovers are rabid and while they may watch a lot of crap, they are extremely hard to please.

Night of the Living Dead and the stories of Stephen King have been inspirations to us. No they aren't the only ones but without them would we have the ideas we have today? Likewise if Romero and King hadn't read the books they read or watched the movies they saw they probably wouldn't have done what they did the way they did it. We all have our influences and it's best to embrace them instead of push them away.

*Above I mention my death scene where I spray my blood on the wall. Well I worked at a Tim Horton's around this same time in high school when we were shooting Revenant. One day my supervisor went in the bathrooms to do a check/cleaning. To his surprise someone had smeared blood all over the wall in the woman's stall. Somehow that's only the second most disgusting story involving a bathroom from my days at Tim Horton's. It's also only third in the top 3 gross bathroom stories of all time. But that's for another day.

#181: The Fly

The Fly (1986)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Written by Charles Edward Pogue
Based on the short story by George Langelaan
Starring Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz

Cronenberg is hit and miss. His pseudo-sexual thrillers (Crash) and some of his really early work (Scanners) are pretty awful. Even his adaptation of The Dead Zone is weak. Critics seemed to like it but other than Christopher Walken's performance I don't see what was so good about it.

Cronenberg was able to generate enough buzz though with his early films to get a bigger budget this time around and stars who at the time were up and coming fresh faces. Oh Goldblum where art thou?

No real story around this one when I think of it, it's just a good horror movie that hits all the hyperbolic notes. Who wouldn't want to watch a movie about an obsessed scientist who accidentally mutates into a giant fly-man (man-fly?) when tinkering with his nifty matter transporter? In fact who wouldn't want his own matter transporter? Sure if something as tiny as an insect jumps in with you, you're likely going to suffer some horrible mutation, but that's worth the risk as far as I'm concerned.

It could be different anyway, because this is just a movie. In real life I imagine there would be no awful side-effects, only the bliss of having superpowers should my body mix with the DNA of a fly or spider perhaps.

Okay, it's a pipe dream but super powers regardless of the terrible and inevitable repercussions are a dream to any comic or film geek, guaranteed. See by the time Star Trek is set, science has reached a point of near perfection so the matter transporters don't destroy every particle of your body accidentally. You just have to hope you don't get transported inside a rock.

Now a dream of mine for years and Drew can attest to this is the eventual development of rocket boots and my inevitable acquisition of said rocket boots. Super powers are one thing but what side-effects would rocket boots have? Only one. Greatness.

The technology is not researched or perfected enough and with the use of rocket fuel it's doubtful one would get very far with these boots in the initial prototype. I am ready, willing and able to test rocket boot technology. Any government out there with a rocket boot development program would do themselves a favour by bringing in this strapping young lad and fellow rocket boot enthusiast.

Eagerly I will await my day in (or near...natch!) the sun. Who wants to turn into a fly anyway? Certainly not after seeing poor Brundlefly in action.

Bleed by Adam Atherton

All artwork below belongs to Adam Atherton






Adam Atherton, a good friend of mine just so happens to be a phenomenal artist. He's a comic book nut and now he's possibly on the verge to be a comic book writer.

Check out Zudacomics.com, his comic Bleed is on display there. Sign up for a free account, read his story and vote for it. If he wins the competition he will get to publish the thing.

Zudacomics isn't just a rinky dink operation either. It was set up by DC Comics. That's right, the birthplace of Batman, Superman and Watchmen!

It's a start and I wouldn't schill for his work if I thought it was crap. It's moody and well drawn. It's more of a little taste than the full gamut of what's to come but it has the potential. It's a pretty cutthroat competition so he needs all the help he can get. Take a couple minutes out of your day and vote for him, it means the world to him.

Also, check out his blog. It's hard-linked in his name and is in my bloglist at the bottom of this page but hey, a third way wouldn't hurt. It's AdamAthertonPresents.blogspot.com.

Cheers.

#182: True Romance

True Romance (1993)
Directed by Tony Scott
Written by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Michael Rappaport, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Bronson Pinchot, James Gandolfini, Saul Rubinek, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Samuel L. Jackson

After my parents got me hooked on movies I spent hours on this new fandangled invention called the internet looking up actors I had recognized. Goodfellas put me into the world of Robert De Niro. I had to scoop up everything I could get my hands on from Raging Bull to Taxi Driver (much harder to find at the time than expected) to Heat.

After my friend Jeremiah lent me Pulp Fiction I had to learn more about Quentin Tarantino. Reservoir Dogs came first and then looking at Tarantino's imdb page I saw he had written True Romance. What this film ended up doing above entertainment was broaden my film exposure to a slew of actors I had never seen before. This was before Gandolfini was Tony Soprano and it was just a small role, but his scene in the motel room with Patricia Arquette now seems like a precursor...Soprano training wheels perhaps.

I had seen Gary Oldman in Dracula because to most youngsters, monsters (much like naked women) were awesome. Because of his Drexl Spivey character I discovered one of the most talented and chameleon-like performers that would impress in any role. This guy is one of the best ever.

True Romance is a bloody and vulgar pseudo-action movie but it's more than that. It is a love story and the most unconventional romance you'll ever see. Clarence and Alabama get into drug dealing and murder and drag everyone they meet into the fray in an effort to escape and make it to their own paradise together. They need only each other. So while the execution of the story is somewhat unconventional, the themes at the core are of the oldest ilk imaginable. Melding the traditional with flash-bang modern style (and before Tony Scott got jittery with jump cuts).

It's been a while since I've seen it. The last time came when I was dating a girl -- let's call her Amber -- in Halifax while I was living in Fredericton. It was the first weekend I was spending with her in Halifax. We had started dating after we met one weekend a month earlier when my good friend Amanda introduced us. We hit it off and everything seemed great. We borrowed a copy of True Romance from our mutual friend Adam and that was our Saturday night.

While the relationship ended a month later due in large part to distance and some miscommunication, that night was pretty cool. There is a distinct joy I have when introducing someone to a movie I love. Like my parents showing me Goodfellas and Carlito's Way, I was opening someone's eyes to a new film in their mind's catalogue of viewing.

The weekend was awkward otherwise, it had been a while at that point since my last relationship and well in part due to my awkwardness it didn't go as smootly as hoped. True Romance wasn't the theme for the weekend unfortunately. While it seemed that we were both compatible over our many phone conversations leading up to our first couple days together in person, it wasn't the case when put into practice.

This wouldn't be so bad if we lived in the same city. In some cases, you are either compatible or not, case closed. This was one I thought could be improved over time...she thought otherwise. The end of this story is actually a brain dead moment on my part.

Amber was moving back to Fredericton the following autumn. We had expressed interest in rekindling our brief relationship and we even had a moment when she was visiting one weekend when I pulled her aside and we kissed on her way out of the party for the night.

Fantastic right?

Well it would have been if another ex hadn't recently steamrolled back into my life -- let's call her Claire. In the month following my kiss I had started dating Claire, a girl I had been with a couple years prior, incidentally when she was also living in Halifax with me in Fredericton. We got back together and my next meeting with Amber was really terrible.

"You suck," she said. She said it playfully enough but I realized that any chance of ever being with her again was dashed. I got drunk and it vanquished the feeling for the night...no, it didn't, it made it worse.

Claire and I broke up a week after my birthday and I have been single ever since except for a month this past summer. Sure it's not like that whirlwind was a living hell, it was fun, awkward and by and large a learning process. True romance only exists in the movies, it never comes easy.

Luckily that weekend in Halifax with Amber also started a romance of a different kind. I had bought a bottle of wine that weekend, you know trying to set the mood. A Cabernet Sauvignon called Baron Phillipe de Rothschild.

It's still my go to wine, but it opened my eyes to a world beyond beer. So despite the turmoil of these two failed relationships I came away acquiring a taste for wine. So I got that going for me.

#183: Carlito's Way

Carlito's Way (1993)
Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by David Koepp
Based on the novel by Edwin Torres
Starring Al Pacino, Penelope Ann Miller, Sean Penn, John Leguizamo, Viggo Mortensen, Luis Guzman.

I'm not one to hate on sequels for the sake of hating a sequel. Most movies should be given a chance to be as good or better than its predecessor. Remakes are the same way. A good movie is a good movie.

But sometimes a movie is released that makes absolutely no sense at all. More than a decade after De Palma's crime masterpiece a prequel called Carlito's Way: Rise to Power was released straight to video relying on the drawing power of Puff Daddy.

Who in their right mind would greenlight that idea? Yeah the market is demanding Puffy star in a prequel to a movie barely anyone remembers, yeah, great business sense. It went right to video so it's in movie purgatory anyway so the mystery behind this movie's existence is even more baffling.

Honestly, Carlito's Way is a great film and it's a shame more people haven't heard of it or seen it. All the gangster wannabe's make Scarface their Pacino film of reference and it's terrible. Come on, have you even watched Scarface all the way through? It's painful. It's long and boring with a few over the top catchphrases near the end. Oh and don't forget the mountain of cocaine, that was pretty stellar. And Cuban Pacino doesn't hold a candle to Puerto-Rican Pacino.

Pacino had more to work with in general on Carlito's Way. No, a coked-out Oliver Stone wasn't penning the script but he had a much better supporting cast and a less bloated run-time. Dave Kleinfeld is the reason I don't think Sean Penn is a hack. Well, he's been good but he's done some trash. I Am Sam was a pandering emotional flick about a handicapped Starbucks employee (redunant?) with a lame soundtrack of mediocre Beatles covers.

And Mystic River was not that good, especially his performance. He had no nuance, it held the emotional water of a bad Panic at the Disco song (redundant again?). He was yelling and crying, that's it.

But he hit one out of the park as a sleazy coke-addled attorney. His look was the inspiration for Ken Rosenberg in GTA: Vice City. Coke-heads aren't just a waste of space after all!

I remember watching this for the first time as a teenager. Mom and dad used to rent a bunch of old rentals at Video Stop (now Movie Experts). It's because of this that I was exposed to Goodfellas and other violent movies that most parents wouldn't let their kids watch at the time. My folks understoond the concept of context. They explained to me clearly that just because it was a movie didn't mean I should behave like the monsters portrayed on screen.

"No shit, I'm not an idiot!"

In hindsight I could have used a little more tact when coming up with a response. But my parents, whether they realize it or not are largely responsible for my love of film because of watching $1.00 rentals on the weekends when I was 12 or 13. Because of Goodfellas and Carlito's Way, I watched the Coen Brothers and Kubrick. And even though I could distinguish good storytelling from bad, I was also impressed by Penelope Ann Miller's nude scene. What can I say, for a 13-year-old to see any kind of boobs it's exciting...and awkward in the presence of family.

This American Life...listen to it!

As my university career comes to an end I have been wondering exactly why I had chosen journalism as the major of my eight-year BA. After several false starts I enrolled at St. Thomas University in Fredericton in a pursuit to be a professional writer, or in a more exciting title, a professional storyteller.

While in recent months my desire to be a journalist has waned a bit, my desire to tell stories is as strong as it has ever been. My first year class with Michael Camp focused on great storytellers and the eras of strong journalism specifically. From the war years to the civil rights movement to Watergate, etc. Writers like Tom Wolfe, Ernie Pyle, Hunter S. Thompson inspired me and caused my general exuberance regarding writing.

The biggest problem is it seemed like we were studying history as opposed to current events, which are the core of journalism. My detachment is understandable considering my feeling that my colleagues and I were entering a world where we would be stuck reporting on procedural happenings like the courts and council meetings.

Until recently, this still seemed like the most likely way of achieving my goal and it wasn't very appealing. Philip Lee showed us a documentary from The Wire detailing the death of newspapers.

"Great," I thought. "I have chosen the hindenburg equivalent of a career."

Then a couple weeks later -- yesterday -- he showed us a brief clip from the television version of This American Life. My friend Veda Stelmanis had told me about the show and its host Ira Glass. She told me it was the best show or one of the best -- I really should avoid hyperbole as much as I use it.

The clip he showed was about inner city kids in North Philadelphia who owned and trained horses. They rode horses throughout Philadelphia. It was beautiful and deliberate. The clip wasn't put together with quick cuts, it was picturesque.

I went online. This American Life has radio podcasts available for free download and I have placed links at the bottom of this page. Check it out for humour, information and even just a way to kill an hour in a semi-productive way.

Also, in case you didn't notice, I have a pod-list of Definitely Not the Opera there as well from CBC. Another good way to kill some time through entertainment and information. Shows like this have rejuvenated my desire to tell stories, but not necessarily in a journalistic forum although it is no longer ruled out either.

Enjoy.

#184: Night on Earth

Night on Earth (1991)
Written and Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Starring Winona Ryder, Gena Rowlands, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, Isaach De Bankole, Roberto Benigni
Original music by Tom Waits

Jim Jarmusch is an odd duck. A very creative and sometimes off-putting odd duck. I can easily see why his films are not everyone's cup of tea. They don't have a strict narrative in cases like this and Coffee and Cigarettes or they move slowly focusing more on character instead of plot.

Jarmusch is certainly a virtuosic filmmaker. His work is hard to swallow and to this day he has not made a film designed for the popcorn munching crowd. Some could call him elitist or snooty, but his films are undeniably fascinating whether you like them or find them to be pretentious drivel.

Night on Earth was a great experience. Because I was a fan of his more recent work I ordered Night on Earth from the Criterion collection website last summer when I had a job and thought I would have disposable income for a while.

"Why not invest in my film collection?" I asked.

So I ponied up the cash and waited.

Working at the newspaper, I didn't exactly have fixed hours when I had to be working. If nothing is going on or nothing is scheduled we didn't have to be at the office non-stop to save face with management. At the time, the arts scene in Woodstock was one of my main beats. Like any arts scene, what was going on usually happened at night.

My afternoons were filled by reading at Fusion (the local coffee shop where a bunch of live music happens, usually on Saturdays) and watching movies. Night on Earth was a pleasant surprise. It's really five movies taking place in the same night in five different taxis across the globe.

Two in the USA -- LA and New York, so they might as well be different countries -- one in Paris, Rome and Helsinki. The beauty in the film is Jarmusch doesn't just put a jumble of comedic stories together. They're all slices of life but none are quite like the one preceding it.

The best of the five is the Helsinki short. It's tragic and moving without the melodrama that ruins many of the mainstream big budget tear-fests. It works so well because the characters are realistic and earnest and it bookends the lighter fare.

As we delve deeper into the night across the globe as the viewer the subject matter gets deeper and has more weight to it. There is a progression like any night or any week or any lifetime. This film lives and breathes with its characters.

The setting of the taxi cab is particularly effective because we take the role of passenger. I'm sure you've all been in a cab. And since you've been in a cab you've likely had a conversation with a cab driver. I bet it was at least interesting if not a bit disturbing.

In the spirit of the film I will share two quick cabbie stories...neither of which happened while I was in a cab but a cab driver was involved. Both involve my friend Garrett.

A few winters ago I was in Halifax. Garrett and I went to Bayer's Lake for a double feature. I think it was when The Ring came out or something, but that was October 2002, and I'm pretty sure this happened in February 2003. In any case we get out of Bayer's Lake and it's late, close to midnight. We think the buses are done but we see one coming around the corner.

We raced for that sucker and just barely got on and paid the fare. I think he paid the fare for both of us because I had no change on me. One of my worst habits is using my debit card for everything.

The bus took us to two stops and the driver turned around and said "end of the line." The bus had taken us farther away from the end destination of Seymour Street in the city so we were left with a choice, hoof it or cab it. I discovered I had left my gloves in the movie theatre but we decided to walk anyway. I had this irrational fear of cab drivers at the time, don't ask me why.

So we walked through Mount St. Vincent University. The air was deathly calm and the mid February night was chilly but there was no wind. On the bare tree branches surrounding the campus were hugs black clouds. Well, they weren't clouds. The branches were full of crows. I was a bit uneasy when I said "a murder of crows" so we hustled out of there.

After two hours of walking and some getting lost in some shady looking neighbourhoods -- Halifax can be a daunting place late at night -- we finally reached a familiar territory, Quinpool Road. Walking down a side street parallel to Oxford I saw a parked cab with a cabbie sitting in the front seat leaning back. As Garrett and I walked closer we saw a girl's head pop up from the cabbie's lap and she got out of the car and ran into the house it was parked in front of.

I smiled at the driver and gave him the thumbs up. He turned on the car and drove away. Nothing like catching a cabbie collecting payment orally.

The second story is from just over a month ago when I was in Halifax again, this time for my friend Bill's wedding. I agreed to help Garrett take some sound equipment to the hotel where the wedding was being held. Garrett was doing sound and taking care of the music but had no car, so I decided to help him avoid cabs for the day. Yeah, sure.

The street where the hotel is on is narrow. There was a parked cab in front of the hotel and I was coming from the opposite direction. To park legally I would either have to drive around the block and come in the opposite side or do an illegal u-turn in the narrow street. I elected for the u-turn.

I thought if I pulled the nose of my car in behind the cab and backed up we'd have time. I swung nose first in and then the cab started backing up. If I tried to swing out it would have caused a bit of damage to both of us. I honked at the last second and he bumped my fender. I backed out.

Then out out of the cab climbs this 6'6" monster of a man with a scowl to match. He looks at his bumper and looks at me and nods. I roll down my window and ask "we good?" He nodded again and got in his cab and drove away. I drove around the block and came in the opposite side.

In any case, watch Night on Earth and think about interesting encounters you've had with cab drivers. Share them with me if you like.

#185 & 186: The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron with Gale Anne Hurd (T1) and William Wisher Jr (T2)
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong

Basically, I can't decide which Terminator film I prefer. They're completely different styles and one will be more suitable depending on what mood you are in.

Somehow I escaped high school without seeing either one. I remember being in Halifax my first year of university and a few of my friends were talking about Terminator 2. The specifics of the conversation are lost, but they focused their attention on me.

"What did you think" or "remember that, wasn't that awesome?"

I shuffled in my seat a bit, embarrassed that I had never seen either movie.

"Actually I haven't watched it."

No one said anything right away, they looked at each other and I didn't know if they were going to laugh, cry or hit me. Eventually, I think it was Bill who said "well damn, we have to watch it right now."

"Well shouldn't we watch the first one first?"

"You haven't seen that one either?"

I shook my head. What followed was basically me being tied to a chair not allowed to leave until I had seen both movies. It's probably why, despite the differences between the two movies, I consider them to be one. The memory of that night is so strong, not from specifics but from the interactions and the joking friendship that are connected to a night so simple.

All we did was watch a couple of movies and I was accosted at first because they couldn't believe I had gone a full 17 years of life without seeing these movies. From the dank and noir-like part one to the bright and action packed part two, the Terminator movies will always be close to my heart. And despite Titanic, James Cameron is one of the best filmmakers of all time.

All right... Titanic wasn't the worst movie but I still never want to see it again. But give me some Terminator (not the show or part 3) and we'll roll.

(note: a similar showdown happened when this same group of friends found out I had never seen RoboCop. Those movies must be the most watched R-rated movies by kids and somehow I missed out. Probably because I was busy watching gangster movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas. I was a warped child, I had many enthusiasms.)

Let's hit the road!

Okay, it's November. The days are shorter and the darkness is engulfing everything. It's no shock that by 9:00 pm it's pitch black out, but you can't see a thing at 5:30 anymore! Soon the snow will hit and we'll all be going stir crazy. There is only one surefire solution to the growing anxiety and stress of the season.

Escape!

My good buddy and pal Horatio Faust and I are planning a road trip in my trusty automobile, a Cabrio nobly named Rocinante. Where we will travel, we do not know, but it is not the destination that makes the voyage. You see the destination is only a section of the greater whole. It is a neccessity, but it should represent equal value with the rest of the trip.

When planning a road trip I am of the opinion that it should have a very loose itinerary. Set nothing in stone and leave pretty much everything up for debate and make it easy to change at the drop of a hat. If you plan on going to Toronto and you meet someone suggesting a side trip to New York instead, why say no to an impromptu adventure?

It's time that I put my desires to rest and act upon them. Reading On the Road, The Catcher in the Rye, Death in the Afternoon, Tropic of Cancer among other books has driven me nearly mad with curiosity and an inherent need to see more of the world than I have. The solution is to simply do it.

So Horatio and I will embark on a journey, hopefully to last a week. We do not know exactly where the road will take us but it will whisper the direction into our ears and our minds as the days go by. The road is life dear travelers, let us discover it together.

#187: Predator

Predator (1987)
Directed by John McTiernan
Written by John and Jim Thomas
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpida Carrillo, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura.

This begins the leg of Ahnuld flicks. Three in a row on the countdown to basically prove my everlasting love for Arnold Schwarzenegger and everything he has done in the realm of action movies.

If there are only three Arnie movies on here, it's probably fairly obvious what the next two will be, but what's important is you realize the magnitude of what this guy brought to cinema. He is a musclebound mongoloid, or at least he seemed to be, probably why politics ended up being his game later on. It pains me to not include Conan the Barbarian on this list because it is in the same league as Predator, but just not quite up to snuff.

Predator was the first Arnold movie I saw, well the first one that had any lasting impact. Kindergarten Cop was trash and I knew it as a child. True Lies was pretty good, but not great. Predator cut out the crap and sent a troupe of bad asses into the jungle to battle an unstoppable foe. Set it up with a bit of exposition and character development and then hit the audience with everything you've got.

Granted, Arnie wasn't required to do much in the way of acting, but when has he? The Predator is just a cool villain and a fun action flick that requires no thought to watch. Elitists should take a minute and reflect and just try to have a good time at the movies for once. It's all about balance.

The one-liners rule all. Jesse Ventura is actually better than Arnold in that department despite limited screen time.

"I ain't got time to bleed." and "Bunch of slack-jawed faggots in here! This stuff will make you a god-damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me."

The effects aren't quite up to the level of today, but I loved the 80s because filmmakers were forced to use makeup and props and innovation to create their creatures. There is something soulless in CGI monsters. This version of the Predator is the best you'll find.

#188: Boyz N The Hood

Boyz N the Hood (1991)
Written and Directed by John Singleton
Starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett, Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Regina King.


A few years ago, journalism became the focal point of my life. I consumed everything I could get my hands on to further my understanding of the world, give my point of view added perspective. I read about Vietnam, the Holocaust, Watergate and the Civil Rights Movement.

The thing about journalism for the most part is the story-teller is often distanced from the story itself. It's professionalism. It's objectivity. And in some cases it fails to tell a story properly, sometimes emotion and understanding are necessary for the story to have impact even if it shows a slight bias.

John Singleton essentially filmed a documentary but it was scripted and acted. Everything in Boyz N The Hood stems from what he witnessed in California. He was 23 when he directed it and he was telling the story from fresh eyes.

It's almost Shakespearean in a way watching Tre (Gooding) struggle against what his gangster friends are falling into -- their pre-determined spot in poverty and gang violence -- and what his father Furious (Fishburne) preaches to him about rising above it.

Yes it's about race, but -- and pardon the pun -- it's not just black and white. This is about the cycle of violence. It's a mature concept tackled professionally by a young first-time director. Furious speaks to the point that it had gone beyond racism and the cycle had been completed and inner city African American kids were slowly sliding into violent lives and their kids were too. These people fought other gangs, and those gangs were made up of people very similar in life cycles. On an individual basis a decision is needed in order to get out. This is Tre's dilemma; escape and abandon his friends or join him and eventually kill or be killed.

Boyz n the Hood is a phenomenal film. It's got strong performances, a good script and a clear and crisp message with force behind it. It's never convoluted, it just simply is what it is. Almost like a documentary.

#189: A Fish Called Wanda

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Directed by Charles Crichton
Written by John Cleese
Starring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin

"Asshole!"

Otto is hilarious. Kevin Kline as sophisticated as he has been and as clean cut as he appears in some of his films, he shines brightest in the absurd, idiotic characters like Otto. He's not the only reason A Fish Called Wanda is a great movie, but without his iconic moron, it might not have made the grade.

The vignettes with Michael Palin as a stuttering buffoon provide nice breaks from the central plot and Cleese and Curtis provide their own share of laughs through their awkward romance, but it is Kline that holds it all together.

A Fish Called Wanda has elements of every style of comedy, whether it's dry, slapstick, witty, etc. I don't want to get hoity toity with my analysis, but it's a different kind of comedy than Caddyshack for instance.

I originally caught it on a Sunday afternoon in high school playing on A&E. Chuckled a few times and never thought much of it. The next time I saw it was without commercials but still on television. It was one day when I either didn't have class or I skipped them. Might have been inebriated in one way shape or form... but I digress.

It was a revelation. It was sharp, funny and entertaining. It was unable to achieve its full effect before due to censorship and commercials, two of the most purely evil inventions of the human race. In it's true form, A Fish Called Wanda is phenomenal. If you catch it on tv, be sure it's on a movie channel and not basic cable where a term like "asshole" will be dubbed into "jerk" by some guy who sounds nothing like Kevin Kline.

#190: A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan (1998)
Directed by Sam Raimi
Written by Scott B. Smith based on his novel
Starring Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda, Billy Bob Thornton, Brent Briscoe, Gary Cole.



A couple years ago my criminology professor played A Simple Plan in class. To this day, her reasoning is unclear and no one really paid attention in class, which was a shame. It's Raimi's most mature and developed film he's ever made.

Similar in basic premise to the Coen's No Country For Old Men it asks what someone would do if he or she found a bunch of money in the woods with no one around. Sure, immediately you'd think it's so easy just to take it and no one would ever know, but then you wouldn't have much of a movie on your hands. Pretty much just a masturbatory fantasy of escaping responsibility.

This is a bleak film. And some people hate bleak, for much of the same reason why I love it. Movies aren't just about escaping to a magical happy world. A Simple Plan could happen. It takes place in a small town where everyone knows one another. Those who find the money have managed their lives without it for so long but when it enters the equation, it drives obsession and madness into the quiet life of the small town between three acquaintances.

It's a slow burn of a movie, with communication falling between the lines of dialogue. How Hank looks at his brother or wife conveys more of his intentions than what he says. It's a great performance by the underrated Paxton.

Raimi may be bogged down as the director of the Spider-Man movies now, but he has a style and an eye for detail that will be noticed again. He made a couple great superhero movies and one terrible one and is on the verge of starting a fourth. If only he would return to his bread and butter of horror or subtle thrillers. Go low budget Sammy!

Have you seen A Simple Plan? It seems to be a forgotten gem now. It came about to solid reviews but is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the other great films from the 90s. 1998 was a great year for cinema, and if you haven't seen this one yet, do yourself a favour.

Philadelphia sports fans are the equivalent of a crap salad

One of my favourite sports sites is deadspin.com. I have its blog roll at the bottom of my page here, but I feel the need of promoting this story they ran yesterday.

The Angryville Chronicles is a compilation of stories from Deadspin readers discussing various encounters with Philadelphia sports fans over the years. Some of it is disgusting, some vile, some offensive...well mostly all of those things. But it's also hilarious in the "thank God it didn't happen to me" kind of way.

It makes me understand what my friend Kris was saying when he said he can't get excited for the World Series this year. He hates the Phillies with every fibre of his being. While I don't get his loathing for Jimmy Rollins or Pat Burrell, the Philadelphia fans by and large have a history of ass-holish behaviour.

Tampa Bay is a horse of a different colour. The Rays have no fans, or at least very few. It doesn't matter that game one sold out in 61 minutes. Of course it sold out! It's the World Series. Now if the Rays have more fans than their visiting opponents regularly in the regular season, they are a legitimate fanbase. The team deserves its spot in the World Series, the fans do not.

That stadium was a ghost town all year and with the team's depressing history, who can blame the fans for staying away. At least in the beginning. But as the season wore on, no one showed. Similarly, the Florida Marlins have won two championships and still can't find a consistent crows at its games. For some damn reason, baseball doesn't thrive in Florida.

Game one was a decent affair, but I'll admit I watched more of the movie Trading Places with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy in their prime. I've seen it before and yet I was more involved with that movie than the first game of the World Series. It's a shame, because I was amped for it beforehand, but then I got easily distracted as Scott Kazmir pitched sloppily and the Rays bats couldn't generate much of anything. Watching Dan Aykroyd go from a snooty millionaire to a degenerate drunken Santa Claus waving a gun was much more entertaining.

What will be most disappointing is if this series goes out with a whimper. A four-game sweep that everyone forgets and writes off. I'm a Cardinals fan but even I can agree the series where St. Louis defeated the Tigers in five games was a dull series. It could be the championship series games for each league will be more interesting than the World Series...which has been the case the last few years.

Bit of a hiatus on the list

Well it appears as though my laptop has gone kaput. Sadly along with it is my top 200 list.

So if you were wondering why I hadn't updated the countdown, that is why. Hopefully I'll be able to get the computer fixed with all my files in place. The damn thing won't turn on so I have no idea what happened. No warning, nothing. Very strange.

I'll be taking it to Future Shop tomorrow or so and get it back asap, I think it's still under warranty. Then we'll be back in action!

JCW

#191: Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams (1989)
Written and Directed by Phil Alden Robinson
Based on the book by W.P. Kinsella
Starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones, Frank Whaley, Timothy Busfield, Burt Lancaster


Field of Dreams is a very sentimental film, and usually the overly sentimental rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's the combination of baseball and fantasy that reels me in, but I can watch this movie any time and it always makes me feel great.

Costner isn't the cesspool of cinema a lot of people make him out to be, I think he's much more consistent than Nic Cage for instance. And when he does anything related to baseball it's a winner.

Ray Kinsella (Costner) is just so damned likable. He seems crazy and if you met anyone who said they heard voices telling him to build a baseball diamond in his corn field, you'd have that person committed.

But Kinsella is portrayed in an endearing way. It helps that the story is told from his point of view, but when other characters are telling him he's crazy, I root for him. Obviously in reality Kinsella would be nuts, but for the two hours this film is on it's magical.

The first time he sees "Shoeless Joe" after the field is built shows it's all worthwhile even though the road is long.

Field of Dreams represents the magic baseball has had on a nation of people. It may be tainted due to cheating and steroids in recent years but at one time it represented purity and hope. I think in some ways people still think of it in that way. When I watch Field of Dreams I certainly forget about all the bullshit accompanying professional sports today.

More importantly it's about family and second chances. Kinsella never had the chance to connect with his own father, until he built the field...the field of dreams.